Nursery World - More party promises for the early years

Education and the national health service became election issues last week as the main political parties continued to set out their stalls with pledges for the next five years. The Liberal Democrats focused on the early years and renewed their promise to invest more in education, saying this was the key to recruiting more teachers, cutting class sizes and employing more early years specialists. They want to fund 1,000 early years specialists to work with nursery schools, increase funding for books and equipment by an average 1,250 per primary school and 4,250 per secondary school, and see average class sizes for all five-to 11-year-olds cut to 25 pupils.

The Liberal Democrats focused on the early years and renewed their promise to invest more in education, saying this was the key to recruiting more teachers, cutting class sizes and employing more early years specialists. They want to fund 1,000 early years specialists to work with nursery schools, increase funding for books and equipment by an average 1,250 per primary school and 4,250 per secondary school, and see average class sizes for all five-to 11-year-olds cut to 25 pupils.

Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader, said that many children had lost out under Labour because it had stuck to Conservative spending plans for the first two years of this Parliament. He added, 'One of our top priorities is to invest more in early years education.'

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